Michael Eric Dyson said President Trump is "lethally ignorant" on the history of race Wednesday in an appearance on CNN. Dyson also defended activist groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter for "preserving the fabric of America." "This man is lethally ignorant, incapable of even having a kindergartner's comprehension of the history of race," Dyson told CNN's Harlow. "Black Lives Matter, the Antifa movement, and so on, are interested in preserving the fabric of America," Dyson said. POPPY HARLOW, CNN: So, Michael, the president said that we are — about the monuments — about the Confederate monuments yesterday — that we are trying to erase — we, being American people — are trying to — it is trying to erase history, change culture by taking them down. And that sort of completely ignores the fact that they are representing a sanitized, fictionalized history. I mean, if you look back at these beautiful remarks from Mitch Landrieu earlier this year who quoted the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens. And he talked about that cornerstone speech and when he said that the great truth is that the "n" word is not equal to the white man. That slavery and support and subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. What did you make of how the president addressed these monuments yesterday? MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: This man is lethally ignorant, incapable of even having a kindergartner's comprehension of the history of race. And for those who say look, the Confederacy is about history and heritage, it is. The history and heritage of racism. The history and heritage of bigotry, building their sense of biological and, in many cases, theological and national identity upon a lie. A mythology of white supremacy. The belief that some people are inherently superior and some people are inherently inferior. For the president then to defend the actions against taking down Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson — and remember, these people hated America enough to want to secede from it. The people that we claim — Black Lives Matter, the Antifa movement, and so on, are interested in preserving the fabric of America. Mr. Miller says, again, that there was violence there. But the problem is to equate the violence in reaction against bigotry with the bigotry itself is to misunderstand the fact that when you go to cancer treatment the radiation is tough treatment, but it is meant to remove the cancer. So what he fails to understand and what the president, especially, fails to understand is that you are complicit with the worst occurrence of bigotry in this country when you try to draw a false equivalence between secessionist and racist and Confederate defenders and bigots and neo-Nazis and African-American and white people and others who have defended the right of this nation to really seek a path of healing beyond the consternation we see now. That's the problem with this president. He ain't got the right moral vision, he doesn't have the right words to express that moral vision, and he lacks an understanding of American history. This is the most illiterate, incompetent president in the history of this nation and it shows — and it tells on him in the midst of this racial crisis where he is incapable of showing basic decent compassion for those who are vulnerable and who are victims of white supremacy in this country. MORE: CNN panel with Michael Eric Dyson, Brunell Donald-Kyei of the Trump National Diversity Coalition have heated argument on who is responsible for death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville:

In an interview with WABC-TV, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called on President Trump to get rid of Steve Bannon. "I think it's important for the president to fire Steve Bannon," King told the ABC affiliate in New York. "He should go." "That to me is exploiting the racial issue," he said of Bannon wanting to use identity politics against Democrats. "That can't be allowed. Also the fact that he is undercutting the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and the head of the National Security Council on North Korea. To me, his time in the White House should be over."

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Seth Lipsky, New York PostIn the new Civil War, I’m with George Ã¢?? as in George Washington. It’s one thing to start dismantling monuments of Civil War generals. It would be another to go after the most famous founding fatherÃ¢?Â¦…

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Julia Ioffe, The Atlantic“Of course, it was terrorism,” said General H.R. McMaster on Sunday morning, the day after James Alex Fields, Jr. allegedly plowed his gray 2010 Dodge Challenger into a crowd of anti-white supremacist protestors, then reversed and, bumper dangling by a thread, hit still more people on the way back. When he was done, one person, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was dead and 19 more were injured. Attorney General…

Newt Gingrich said Thursday on FOX & Friends that President Trump must become more disciplined and that his initial response to Charlottesville was inadequate. "The president was inadequate initially, particularly when he began to say there some good people in the crowd of neo-Nazis and alt-right," the former House Speaker said. "If you're a good person and you see someone chanting anti-Semitic chants and you see somebody wearing a Nazi flag, you leave, you don't stay." "He's much more isolated than he thinks he is," Gingrich said of Trump

In an interview with Charlie Rose earlier this week, Rev. Al Sharpton called for the government to strip public funding of the Jefferson Memorial. Charlie Rose: Does it matter — he mentioned Thomas Jefferson. He wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson had slaves. Al Sharpton: He had slaves and children with the slaves. Charlie Rose: Exactly. Al Sharpton: And it does matter. Charlie Rose: Should they take down the Jefferson memorial? Al Sharpton: I think that people need to understand when people that were enslaved and robbed of even the right to marry, and had forced sex with their slave masters, that this is personal to us. My great grandfather was a slave in South Carolina owned by the family that ended up, Strom Thurmond was one of them, a newspaper discovered it. So, this is personal. This is not some kind of removed discussion from us. Our families were victims of this, certainly it ought to — Charlie Rose: Therefore, everybody associated with slavery in terms of any public monument to them — Al Sharpton: When you look at the fact that public monuments are supported by public funds, you are asking me to subsidize the insult of my family. Charlie Rose: Then I repeat Thomas Jefferson had slaves. Al Sharpton: And I would repeat that the public should not be paying to uphold somebody who had that kind of background. You have private museums. You have other things that you may want to do, but that's not even the issue here, Charlie. We're talking about here, an open display of bigotry announced and over and over again. Watch the full interview: